“Most of the Venom”

Shorter Paul Krugman: “Most of the venom is coming from you, brainwashed followers of a personality cult that reminds me of Richard Nixon and George Bush, supporting a guy who some have said is a secret Muslim (not me, of course). Oh, and could Obama please stop it with the racial remarks already?”

9 Responses to “Most of the Venom”

I stopped reading part way through because I saw it drifting that way. It’s particularly striking since both campaigns have put the public venom (or criticism, to give it a less snaketastic name) to one side for the last week or so. I suspect he wrote the thing in advance, and, since he wasn’t even going to try for fake evenhandedness, the facts didn’t really matter.

This post is far below your usual standards. Krugman cited slurs of both Clinton and Obama; in fact, two for Clinton vs. one for Obama. And I don’t see how you get from “Mrs. Clintonâ€™s entirely reasonable remark that it took L.B.J.â€™s political courage and skills to bring Martin Luther King Jr.â€™s dream to fruition was cast as some kind of outrageous denigration of Dr. King” to “‘could Obama please stop it with the racial remarks already?’â€

I’ll chime in as one of the others who read it that way. As far as the campaigns go, it is the Clinton campaign I most worry about in this regard–such as their recent attempt to claim that Obama will suffer against McCain because he’s “weak on security”–which has the unfortunate effect of endorsing the Republican position on what constitutes “strong on security.” In this respect it is reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s failure, throughout the 90’s to shift the terms of debate on these sorts of issues.

What I would like to ask Obama partisans is what would they consider “fair criticism” of Obama? I think the Resko comment in the debate was unfair and deserved far more criticism than I’ve seen, but the LBJ/MLK criticism was unfair and seemingly intended to shore up African-American support.

Obama’s current campaign ad tells us that he will “fix Washington.” That slogan is as empty as “weapons of mass destruction,” and as stupidly futile as “stay the course.”

From 1946 through 1968 America, though government action, established the winning strategy for the Cold War, sent men safely to the moon and back and produced economic boons therefrom, passed civil rights and voting rights acts, integrated “separate-but-equal” schools throughout the country, passed efficient national health insurance for large parts of the population, and took the lead in rebuilding Europe after WWII. These actions are the result of the leadership of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. Their predecessors followed the original Cold War strategy.

But integration changed the political landscape and campaign finance changed corruption from being the acts of a few politicians into a system of “government of the People, by the Parties, for the Powerful.”

So we have had since 1968 the impeachment of two Presidents and the failure to prosecute the real criminal, Ira-Contra, unnecessary early deaths due to tobacco, unnecessary early deaths because of lack of health care for millions of our citizens, a widening of the gap between rich and poor, denial of full civil rights for homosexuals, and pursuit of policies that may have already doomed millions, perhaps billions, to death because of global warming. Denial of health care, siding with tobacco producers, and siding with major polluters, show that our two-party system is a world-class killing machine.

So for 22 years we were building a better world, then for the next 40 years we have been destroying it. When I say “we” I mean our two Political Parties.

This discourse of this political season shows how the system is devoid of any real meaning other than to manipulate the electorate into voting for all the wrong reasons. We, the voters, talk about age, gender, race, personality, spouses, religion, and other factors that have no role in how our nation will be governed. Issues are kicked to the curb.

Our two-party system is corrupt and so are the people in it. And like global warming, we have reached a tipping point. We are not far from the revival of “states rights” to the same virulent degree we saw in the 19th century. R. Albert Mohler, in his new book, “Culture Shift” calls for the withdrawal of all Southern Baptist children from the public schools. This sect claims 5% of the population as members. Such a withdrawal will shock the South where Southern Baptists are concentrated, and the Old Confederate South will rise again.

Kieran, you don’t think that Krugman was deliberately going over the “secret Muslim” charge again to make a point about Obama as a candidate? I thought that was an incredibly forced way for him to assert a convoluted point about pragmatism.